By Arnold Drake, John David Warner, Gerry Boudreau, Alfredo Giolitti & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-449-8
Star Trek launched in the USA on September 8th 1966, running until June 3rd 1969: three seasons comprising 79 episodes. A moderate success, the show only really achieved its stellar popularity after going into syndication; running constantly in American local TV regions throughout the 1970s.
It was also sold all over the world, popping up seemingly everywhere and developing a fanatically devoted fanbase.
There was very little merchandising but an inevitable comicbook – from franchising specialist Gold Key – which ran for almost a decade beyond the show’s cancellation. The initial comics tales were controversially quite dissimilar from the screen episodes in many details, but by the time of the tales in this sturdy full-colour hardback collection (reprinting Star Trek #19-24 from July 1973 to May 1974), most inconsistencies had been ironed out and Italian superstar illustrator Alberto Giolitti had hit a peak of creativity.
Following Introduction ‘Where No Star Trek Comic Had Gone Before’ from Trek merchandising expert Paula M. Block, the trans-galactic trips resume with ‘The Haunted Asteroid’ – written by Arnold Drake and offering a rare Stateside inking job by Sal Trapani over Giolitti’s pencils – as the Starship Enterprise is despatched to investigate uncanny events at the universe’s most romantic tourist spot: a glittering space tomb built by an ancient ruler as a tribute to his lost love.
Before long the crew too are experiencing bizarre visions and seemingly supernatural visitations, leading Captain Kirk and his team to uncover an even more amazing solution and proof that true love is eternal…
Drake & Giolitti then detail how the odious task of escorting spoiled brat Crown Prince Raviki home to take up the reins of government becomes a deadly affair after planet Nukolee becomes ‘A World Gone Mad’. Moreover, whatever poisoned the minds of the boy’s subjects soon starts affecting the crew of the Enterprise…
John David Warner scripted ‘The Mummies of Heitius VII’ as Kirk and Company are ordered to escort an archaeological find to a research facility. When the body in question comes to life and shanghais the ship, the Captain, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy are drawn into a terrifying struggle against ancient automatons programmed to turn organic beings into slave cyborgs…
‘Siege in Superspace’ – written by Gerry Boudreau – sees the Enterprise drawn through a black hole into a higher realm and sucked into a war between humanoid refugees and ghastly war-machines grown by a marauding artificial intelligence from the flora and geology of their homeworld…
‘Child’s Play’ (also by Boudreau) follows a desperate SOS to a planet wracked by plague and devoid of adults. Infected by a disease which kills in days, the starship crew’s search for a cure is hampered by bellicose kids indulging in full-contact war games and well used to seeing everybody die before their thirteenth birthday…
This cosmic compendium concludes with another Drake & Giolitti collaboration as ‘The Trial of Captain Kirk’ finds the bold hero back on Earth to answer charges of bribery, corruption and collusion with pirates.
Subject of a most assiduous frame-up, Kirk happily acts as a stalking horse while Spock, McCoy and Engineer Scott ferret out the real traitor: a trail which leads into the highest echelons of Star Fleet…
Rounding out this compelling collection is a gallery of painted covers and a remarkably scanty biographical feature ‘George Wilson: About the Artist’; a man of immense imagination, prodigious talent and prolific output, but one about whom precious little is known.
Straightforward sci fi thrills and dashing derring-do pack this thrilling and astoundingly compelling collection of comics classics which will delight not just TV fans and comics collectors but also any reader in search of a graphically superior good time.
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